Mumbai: City-wide project taps into 'mochis' to craft a cure for those with 'clubfoot'

Last month, a stranger emerged from the gents' washroom Avinash Bansode mops daily on CST's platform 18 and asked if he could take a picture of his crescent-shaped feet. The 30-year-old Jalgaon-born 11th pass housekeeper obliged, quaking in his oversized plastic sandals. He was sure he was about to lose yet another job to his lifelong "problem".

Already, his concave feet-something that his rustic midwife grandma often attributed to his mother sitting cross-legged during the solar eclipse-had caused him as many rejections in job interviews as on the cricket playgrounds of his higher secondary school back home in Jalgaon.

And now the Titwala resident-who used to work 12-hour shifts running around as a valet in a Kalyan mall for a year-was finally tasting security as a washroom cleaner when a stranger's phone camera zoomed in on his deepest insecurity-his blood-clot-causing black sandals. "Now, I wear the plastic sandals each morning for the mandatory attendance photograph. Then, I immediately switch to these," says Bansode, pointing to the curved green foam slippers that fit his feet like rubber gloves and also kept him from slipping.

Bansode-who still doesn't know the official name for his birth defect except that it's not polio-is among a handful of people with clubfoot who have benefitted from Fit My Feet , a citywide pilot project that is providing affordable and customized footwear for those most in need. Initiated by a global marketing services firm in partnership with a shoe manufacturer, the project provides a footwear toolkit containing tracing paper, adjustable straps and soles to cobblers who then create snug slippers for those in need using their pliers and other traditional tools.

Clubfoot is a congenital condition that causes a baby's foot to turn inward or downward. "Its cause is unknown," says orthopaedician Dr Snehal Gawali, who sees one to two such patients per month. In babies who have clubfoot, the tendons that connect their leg muscles to their heel are too short, adds Dr Gawali. "These tight tendons cause the foot to twist out of shape," he adds. As per the 2016 National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog Data, India has an annual birth rate of 20.4 births per 1000 people and the estimated number of infants born with clubfoot is around 27,000 per year.

If left untreated, clubfoot can result in permanent physical disability, leading to social, economic, and psychological burden on the individual and their families. "People tend to think it's their fault when it's simply a stroke of misfortune," says Dr Gawali even as Bansode regrets the time grandmother had snuck into the hospital and brought him home as an infant when he was admitted for a corrective surgery . Surgery is often expensive and elusive to the affected, says Gaurav Mishra, creative excellence manager at the marketing services firm, explaining why they embarked on creating affordable footwear "that can take the shape of any foot by incorporating adjustable straps on a versatile sole".

The idea sprang from the firm's senior creative director Vikram Dhembare's consistent sightings of people with clubfoot while commuting to office by train. "It was heart-breaking to see them adjusting to footwear that was not made for them," says Dhembare. Conceived in 2022, the idea took shape this year following collaborations with footwear designers, orthopaedic specialists, cobblers and individuals with clubfoot.

After months of research, manual crafting emerged as the solution, says Mishra, explaining why the team decided to work with India's ubiquitous ' mochis ', "an extremely skilful network with a long tradition of creating custom-made footwear using locally available materials."

While Mumbai's cobblers had the tools to make the footwear for people with clubfoot, they lacked the lightweight raw material required. So, the team experimented with various materials and strategies before coming up with a curated kit containing extra-long straps that can be trimmed to any length, tracing paper for obtaining precise foot measurements and marking strap positions, a soft and supportive upper sole, and a flexible yet durable bottom sole designed to offer both traction and support. "We have to follow the illustrations, measure the feet, cut the soles and stitch the belt," says Chotu Khajure, one of 20-odd cobblers in the city whose background walls announce the project.

The project also aims to provide a new commerce stream to the cobbler community. "When customers wear them, I feel good," says Khajure, whose two-decade-old Jogeshwari shop has seen many unconventional pairs of feet. "Unfortunately, I couldn't do anything for people with disabilities then as I lacked raw material," he says in Marathi.